Director

CHON A. NORIEGA is a professor in the UCLA Department of Film, Television, and Digital Media. He is author of Shot in America: Television, the State, and the Rise of Chicano Cinema (Minnesota, 2000) and editor of nine books dealing with Latino media, performance and visual art. Since 1996, he has been editor of Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, the flagship journal for the field since its founding in 1970. In July 2002, he became director of the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center.

For the past decade, Noriega has been active in media policy and professional development, for which Hispanic Business named him as one of the Top 100 Most Influential Hispanics. He is co-founder of the 500-member National Association of Latino Independent Producers (NALIP, established in 1999) and served two terms on the Board of Directors of the Independent Television Service (ITVS), the largest source of independent project funding within public television. Noriega has made presentations to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, the U.S. Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and U.S. Congressional Entertainment Caucus. He recently completed a pilot study to develop quantitative methodologies for the study of hate speech on commercial media.

In addition to his work in media, Noriega has developed numerous arts projects, including L.A. Xicano, which comprised five exhibitions for the Getty Foundation's Pacific Standard Time initiative (2011-2012). He has also helped recover and preserve independent films and video art, including the first three Chicano-directed feature films. The restoration of these films is the cornerstone of an ongoing "Chicano Cinema Recovery Project" that he organized between the UCLA Film and Television Archive and the Chicano Studies Research Center. In 2009, Noriega curated and co-hosted a monthlong festival called "Latino Images in Film" on Turner Classic Movies.

Noriega's awards and recognitions include the Getty Postdoctoral Fellowship in the History of Art (for art history), the Rockefeller Foundation Film/Video/Multimedia Fellowship (for documentary production), and the Ann C. Rosenfield Distinguished Community Partnership Prize (UCLA).